Precision Farming: Dreams and Realities for Indian Agriculture

Precision Farming: Dreams and Realities for Indian Agriculture

Content issues and the Gateway debate
Despite all the natural advantages, India’s productivity of food grains per hectare is no more than three-fourths of the world average and less than half of that in agriculturally advanced countries, per capita food grain availability even after the Green Revolution, has been less than two thirds of the world average. Only five states in India, namely Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh – produce more grain than their populations can consume. The combined population of the five states is less than one- third of the total of the country. More than two thirds of the population lives in states that are still food-deficit. This requires transport of lakhs of tonnes of food grain, involving high costs and pilferage. Our effort should have been to make all the states self-sufficient with respect to food grains and if some disturbances occurred due to unnoticed natural calamities the nation must be in an ever ready position to mitigate such challenging tasks.

The Indian green revolution is also associated with negative ecological / environmental consequences. The status of Indian environment shows that, in India, about 182 million ha of the country’s total geographical area of 328.7 million ha is affected by land degradation of this 141.33 million ha are due to water erosion, 11.50 million ha due to wind erosion and 12.63 and 13.24 million ha due to water logging and chemical deterioration (salinization and loss of nutrients) respectively. On the other end, India shares 17 per cent of world’s population with 2.5 per cent of geographical area, 1 per cent of gross world product, 4 per cent of world carbon emission and hardly 2 per cent of world forest area. The Indian status on environment is though not alarming when compared to developed countries, it gives an early warning to take appropriate precautionary measures.

The growth rate of grain production during the Ninth plan has been less than the population growth rate. The poor agricultural performance has not been because of the vagaries of monsoon. From 1997-98 to 2002-03, rainfall was between 92 and 106 per cent of the normal. Per capita availability of grain and per capita calorie intake, which were less than the minimum required for adequate nutrition, have further declined. According to Human Development Report 2003, the percentage of the undernourished in India, which was 21 a few years ago, has now reached 24.

The Government claims that India has emerged as the seventh largest exporter of food grains in the world. This is nothing to be proud of, if we take into account that the total Indian grain export in 2002-03 did not add up to even 4 per cent of the total world exports; and the value of our grain exports did not add up to even the value of our imports of vegetable oils and pulses. The more crucial question, however, is whether it is morally justifiable to export grain when 24 per cent of the population remains under-nourished.

The decline in agricultural growth and increase in rural poverty have been due to the long persisting government indifference towards the farm sector, which is evident from plan outlays on Agricultural and Allied activities, Rural Development and Irrigation, which added up to 37.1 per cent of the total during the first plan were brought down to only 19.4 per cent during the Ninth plan. However, the main reason, for poor performance of the farm sector has been the long persisting adverse terms of trade policies for agriculturists in addition to the mismanagement of natural resources leads to ever ending crisis.

The Need for Precision Farming
The ‘Green revolution’ of 1960’s has made our country self sufficient in food production. In 1947, the country produced a little over six million tonnes of wheat, in 1999; our farmers harvested over 72 million tonnes, taking the country to the second position in wheat production in the world. The production of food grains in five decades, has increased more than three fold, the yield during this period has increased more than two folds. All this has been possible due to high input application, like increase in fertilization, irrigation, pesticides, higher use of HYV’s, increase in cropping intensity and increase in mechanization of agriculture.

i) Fatigue of Green Revolution
Green revolution of course contributed a lot. However, even with the spectacular growth in the agriculture, the productivity levels of many major crops are for below than expectation. We have not achieved even the lowest level of potential productivity of Indian high yielding varieties, whereas the worlds highest productive country have crop yield levels significantly higher than the upper limit of the potential of Indian HYV’s. Even the crop yields of India’s agriculturally rich state like Punjab is far below than the average yield of many high productive countries (Ray et al., 2001).

ii) Natural Resource Degradation
The green revolution is also associated with negative ecological/environmental consequences. The status of Indian environment shows that, in India, about 182 million ha of the country’s total geographical area of 328.7 million ha is affected by land degradation of this 141.33 million ha are due to water erosion, 11.50 million ha due to wind erosion and 12.63 and 13.24 million ha are due to water logging and chemical deterioration (salinisation and loss of nutrients) respectively. On the other end, India shares 17 per cent of world’s population, 1 per cent of gross world product, 4 per cent of world carbon emission, 3.6 per cent of CO2 emission intensity and 2 per cent of world forest area. One of the major reasons for this status of environment is the population growth of 2.2 per cent in 1970 – 2000. The Indian status on environment is, though not alarming when compared to developed countries, gives an early warning.

In this context, there is a need to convert this green revolution into an evergreen revolution, which will be triggered by farming systems approach that can help to produce more from the available land, water and labour resources, without either ecological or social harm (Swaminathan, 2002). Since precision farming, proposes to prescribe tailor made management practices, it can help to serve this purpose.

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